OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company which describes its mission as "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."

This seems very much in line with Musk's vocal opinion on A.I. and the potential threat it poses to humanity. Elon's feelings were made clear in 2014 where he spoke with CNBC and said that his investments were, "not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return… I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence."

“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful,” said Musk in a further interview in 2014. “I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.”

Because of AI's surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it'll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.

We're hoping to grow OpenAI into such an institution.

How the future of OpenAI evolves is too early to tell but the mission is clear: OpenAI intends to act as an overseer of artificial intelligence, a governing body of research scientists and A.I. developers who potentially have the funding and deep expertise to advise whether or not particular machine intelligence initiatives should reach their conclusion.

In other words, Elon Musk wants to be the one to pull the plug on Skynet before it becomes self-aware.

The group's other founding members are leading research engineers and scientists with OpenAI's co-chairs in Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services (AWS),
Infosys, and YC Research are donating to support OpenAI according to the announcement with a committed fund of $1 billion so far.

Currently they appear to be in hiring mode, looking for research engineers and scientists.

If you're interested in joining OpenAI, get in touch directly with them at jobs@openai.com.